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grailfinders · 3 years

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Fate and Phantasms #201

Welcome to Fate and Phantasms Season 2! With our vacation over, we're gonna hop straight into the queen of beasts and pranks, Anastasia! Since she gets a lot of her power from a fictional character, making her a Silverquill Warlock just makes sense. Kinda. Check out her build breakdown below the cut (but expect Lostbelt 1 Spoilers), or her character sheet over here!

Next up: We're going whole hog!

Race and Background

Viy is... something else entirely, but Anastasia is clearly a Human from a Variant timeline, a.k.a. a lostbelt. This gives her +1 Charisma and +1 Intelligence, proficiency in Sleight of Hand to sneak rocks into snowballs, and the Elemental Adept feat to ignore cold resistance and bump all cold damage dice up so the minimum they can roll is a 2. We get a disappointingly small amount of snow and ice in this build (turns out Demons are mana hogs), but this'll make sure the ice you do get has some bite to it.

Ability Scores

Make your Charisma super high this time, you're good at messing with people and dealing with extraplanar monsters, both of those are charisma for some reason. Dexterity is next for a better chance at playing practical jokes on people. You gotta be sneaky and have fast hands, that's dexterity. Your Intelligence is also pretty high, you have to come up with schemes to act upon them. Wisdom's decent, but it's not like Yaga are good liars anyway. Your Constitution isn't great though, turns out you're weak to bullets, but we're dumping Strength. Nobles typically don't turn to heavy lifting, and you died when you were 17, so that's two strikes against the "buff Ana" theory. Finding out she died at 17 also makes the degree to which a certain part of this fandom gets horny for Anastasia waaaay creepier. Like, they probably don't know she's a kid, and that's FGO's fault, but still.

Class Levels

Aaanyway, let's start leveling! As a 100% Silverquill Warlock build, you'll find the pen is mightier than the sword! And the pen, in this metaphor, is a terrifying demon. The swords are still swords. You get Wisdom and Charisma save proficiency, as well as Arcana and Religion. Your doll's into the former and your boss is super into the latter. Not Kadoc, the guy who's actually in charge. Warlocks get Pact Magic, letting you cast one spell per short rest. You'll get more & stronger spell slots as you get stronger, but they all recharge on short rests. Grab the cantrips Eldritch Blast for casterballs, and Frostbite for ice. You also get first level spells like Armor of Agathys for a protective layer of ice, and Hex, Viy's first attempts at creating weaknesses. You deal an extra 1d6 necrotic damage to the target each attack, and they get disadvantage on one kind of ability check. If they drop to 0 HP, you can even move the spell over to a new sucker for up to an hour. The fun doesn't stop there, though! Your subclass makes you an Eloquent Apprentice, giving you proficiency in Deception and Insight, plus you get the Vicious Mockery cantrip to demoralize enemies. You can also use Viy's eyes to plant Silvery Barbs into enemies, weakening them and strengthening your allies at the same time. You can force a creature to re-roll a successful attack, check, or save, and take the lower roll. If the new roll fails, you can then give another creature effectively advantage on an attack, check, or save within the next minute. You can use this as much as you want, but after succeeding once, you'll have to burn a spell slot to reuse it before the end of a long rest. You... don't have many of those.

Second level warlocks get Eldritch Invocations! Grab Armor of Shadows for not dying, and Lance of Lethargy to make your eldritch blasts extra icy! Now they slow down someone you hit once per turn. You can also cast Unseen Servant so Viy can carry stuff for you!

Third level warlocks get the Pact of the Chain, so you can have your little dolly now. You also get a second level spell, Hold Person! It's not cold damage, but it does frost over a person and make it easier to beat them up!

Fourth level warlocks get their first Ability Score Improvement, so bump up your Charisma for better spells! You can also cast Mind Sliver to mess up people's minds, and Ray of Enfeeblement to weaken them further.

This level you get third level spells like Spirit Shroud! More slowing, and more cold damage! You're also a Sign of Ill Omen, letting you cast Bestow Curse once per long rest.

Sixth level silverquills can summon Viy in his big shadow form thanks to Inky Shroud! You learn the Darkness spell, and you can cast it for free once per long rest! If you cast it for free, you can see through Viy, and he'll deal a bit of psychic damage to creatures that start their turn in him. If you want him to be a bit less smokey, you can Summon Shadowspawn, creating a shadow guy that can beat people up an deal cold damage and scare people!

Fourth level spells! Grab Elemental Bane to make your cold spells even colder once a turn. You get another invocation too, and Devil's Sight will let you see through all sorts of darkness, even if it isn't Viy.

Another ASI! Max out that Charisma for super strong spells! You also get Raulothim's Psychic Lance, which deals a buncha psychic damage if they fail an intelligence save, and it'll incapacitate them too if they fail. That freezes them up just enough that they can't take actions or reactions. They can still move around, but they can't do much to help.

Fifth level spell time. Ice don't care about what it's freezing, so grab Hold Monster. You also get the invocation Ghostly Gaze, which'll let you see through solid objects, up to a minute per short rest!

Tenth level silverquills can add an Infusion of Eloquence to their spells, changing the damage type to Psychic or Radiant. Any creature hurt by the spell takes extra damage, and is also charmed (radiant) or frightened (psychic) of you until your next turn. You can do this proficiency times per long rest. Slap it on a spell that does damage over time like hex and you're in business! It's a shame that it takes the ice out of your spells, but it'll really weaken some enemies! Also, grab Prestidigitation. The only thing better than a rock in a snowball is a rock in a snowball that'll disappear after you throw it!

Eleventh level warlocks get a sixth level Mystic Arcanum, letting you cast the spell once per long rest. If you want more Anastasia goodies, grab Investiture of Ice to freeze up your foes. If you want more Viy goodies, grab Eyebite to weaken your enemies with just a glance. Either's good.

Now that your charisma's all good, use this ASI to bump up your dexterity for better sneaking and AC! You can also Mire the Mind (tho really you're more miring the body, with ice), casting Slow once per long rest.

You get a seventh level MA now, so pick up Power Word Pain. If a creature has less than 100 HP, it'll be super hurt, with a speed of 10' maximum and disadvantage on all attacks, checks, and saves, other than constitution. If it tries to cast a spell, it also has to make a save or it wastes the slot!

On a completely unrelated note, fourteenth level silverquills learn a Word of Power. (It's actually two words? idk) You can invoke Deadly Despair in an enemy who fails a roll due to your silver barbs, giving them vulnerability to a damage type until the start of your next turn. Alternatively, you can use a Selfless Invocation as a reaction, giving a creature resistance to the damage they're taking, and you take as much psychic damage as the damage that gets through. This one's why Silverquill beat out the undead warlock; now you can take a bullet for the ones you care about!

Fifteenth level warlocks get an eighth level MA, so grab Maddening Darkness for even more spooky smoke. a 60' radius sphere turns into darkness like the other spell, but creatures that start their turn in the sphere make a wisdom save, taking a bunch of psychic damage if they fail. Your eyes get even better thanks to your Witch Sight, letting you see through shapeshifters and people with magical disguises. People tend to keep that stuff hidden for a reason, and now you get to find out!

Use this ASI to bump up your Constitution. A lot of your spells need concentration, so it should probably be a bit better. Also, this gives you 16 HP instead of 1; Hit points get changed retroactively.

Seventeenth level warlocks get their big ninth level spell! Grab Imprisonment to freeze someone away forever! (Okay, not for "forever" ever, but a really long time.) If the target fails a wisdom save they're trapped, and don't need to breathe, eat, drink, or age. It also can't be found with magic. There's a lot of options, but you can probably talk your DM into letting you ice someone over. There are three ways the target can be set free if they fail the save: 1) A ninth level dispel magic, either on the prison or on the material component you used to cast the spell. 2) You try to make another prison using the same material component. That's a no-no. And 3) a special condition you set, accepted by the DM. The condition has to be reasonable, and possible to happen.

Eighteenth level warlocks get one more Invocation, and the Chains of Carceri will make you just a bit icier. Now you can cast Hold Monster at will, if only against celestials, fiends, and elementals. You can only cast it on the same creature once per long rest.

One last ASI, so bump up that Constitution again for more HP! You also get one last spell; it sucks we can't go back and grab the other sixth level spell we want, but you can grab Fear instead. Viy's a pretty creepy dude.

The capstone ability of the warlock class makes you an Eldritch Master. And by that it makes your patron an Eldritch Master, because you have to spend 1 minute begging your Viy to use this feature. It recharges all your spell slots for free, but you can only use this once per long rest.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

While it doesn't have as many spells as fire damage, ice damage is still a pretty solid pick to specialize in, and thanks to Elemental Adept there's only a very small number of creatures that can slow you down. Just don't play this character in Icewind Dale, and you'll be set.

You have plenty of ways to debuff your foes, ranging from slowing them down, freezing them in place, frightening them, charming them, and weakening their attacks and saves. Unlike Abigail, you diversify your status effects, and you can still deal plenty of damage at the same time, with powerful spells and the ability to shove vulnerabilities into people as a reaction. And those debuffs are both effective and flexible! Spells like Vicious Mockery plus your Silvery Barbs let you tank any kind of save the enemy tries to do. Elemental Bane works for all sorts of damage types, not just cold, and Bestow Curse literally just lets you do whatever you want if your DM signs off on it.

Your Eyesight is incredible, with the ability to see in the dark, through walls, and even through magical disguises. You can pull apart mysteries pretty well with those peepers.

Cons:

A lot of your spells require Concentration, which you aren't that good at. It also means you have to pick one and stick with it for the duration.

On a similar note, being a pure warlock build means you only get a maximum of 4 spells per short rest. We took a couple invocations to help with this, but it's still a small number of slots.

While you can be terrifying on your own with Viy's assistance, it's clear a lot of your features work better with teamwork, so fighting on your own can be a little awkward. For example, deadly despair lasts until the start of your next turn, so if you use your silvery barbs to block an attack, you won't get any damage out of it.

#fgo #fate grand order #dnd 5e #Anastasia #Warlock

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